


Purgatory

by faege



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:00:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faege/pseuds/faege
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>7.23 AU - Dean finds Jess in Purgatory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't actually finished S7 and I haven't started S8, but somehow I got the idea of Dean finding Jess in Purgatory and if you know about my intense love for Dean, Jess, and any combination thereof, you'd know there was no way I wasn't going to finish that. I wrote most of this in August, pulled it out, and brushed it off. Voila. (Yes, I'm too lazy to think of an original title.)

In the end, Purgatory isn’t all that different from Earth. If Dean ignores the red-eyed wildlife, it’s easy enough to close his eyes and imagine that he’s in some forest in Oregon. Without the legendary aura about the name, the place is reduced to trees and fog, streams and the occasional ravine, no different from any other forest he’s seen.

That’s if he closes his eyes, though, and Dean quickly learned that closing your eyes in Purgatory is never a good idea.

Now it’s practically instinct to search out a place to sleep when the sun is high, dig out a hollow to curl up in, find a log to put his back to and rest. He used to put his jacket over his head too, to keep the watery sun out of his eyes, but now he falls asleep easy enough without it. Exhaustion or night vision, he doesn’t know which. All he knows is that what he used to call night is when he doesn’t dare lie down, and things that used to hide in the dark are visible to him now. Those things aren’t so bad, though, because they remind him where he is.

The truly terrifying thing about Purgatory is how easy it is to forget that it’s Purgatory.

Aside from the monsters, it’s just a forest. Nothing changes as far as Dean can see—no walking trees, no sentient rivers, no earth quaking beneath his feet. And that’s the thing. It’s Purgatory—more myth than legend—and of course his mind is running amok with possibilities of the threats he might encounter. It’s like wavering on a tightrope. Every time he convinces himself that it’s all in his head, something happens that he can’t actually see, something to remind him that he’s not lost in a forest in Oregon, not on Earth at all, and it sets him wondering all over again.

That’s the power of Purgatory, he guesses: its mysteries. Maybe it is just a place like any other. Maybe what makes it the stuff of legend is that there’s actually nothing legendary about it. It’s not but it is but it’s not. Dean falls asleep at night and dreams of circles, of dogs chasing their tails, of foxholes and season cycles.

Then, one night in the middle of a dream about Sam finally getting him out and confirming that he’s gone crazy after all, everything changes.

He jerks awake at the sound of rustling and for half a second his muscles go lax with relief at the thought of Castiel finally coming back, telling him there’s a way out, not leaving him there alone. But the sound is wrong for Castiel, the footfalls too light.

A breath later, he has his knife out and is pinning a body to the ground. He sucks in a breath, blinks, and then he’s the one on his back, all the air gone from his lungs.

“Easy, tiger,” Jess says and pulls him up.

She’s perfect, a wide-mouthed Amazon crowned with blond hair, the picture of everything Dean ever wanted for Sam. Dirt smudges her skin, mixed with the brown smears of old blood, but she smiles when she slips her knife into her belt, the leather wide enough for Dean to know it was scavenged from somebody else.

It’s not enough to convince him it’s her, though.

“Jess?” he says, picking his knife up from the ground. “Jessica Moore.”

“The one and only,” she answers, arms crossed like she’s relaxed. Dean knows better. “And you’re Dean. Nice to meet you. Again.”

“Yeah, let’s save that until I know it’s actually you. Tell me something only I would know.”

“About me?” Jess raises her eyebrows. “We knew each other for a grand total of five minutes, Dean. The list is going to be pretty short.”

“What nightgown were you wearing the night we met?”

Jess tilts her head, a smile teasing her mouth. “I wasn’t wearing a nightgown. I was wearing a Smurfs shirt.”

“What day is your birthday?”

“The same as yours. Sam thought that was the funniest thing.”

Dean sheaths his knife and Jess unfolds her arms. “Done with the questions?”

“Like you said, the list is pretty short.” He looks around them quickly, wondering if anything crept up while they were talking, and sees her do the same. One thing’s for sure: Sam will have his hands full, if he ever gets them out. “So how’d you get here? We thought you’d be in Heaven.”

“So did I,” she says. “But fate had other plans, I guess.”

“This… I mean, you’ve been here a lot longer than I have but…you know this is Purgatory, right?”

She rolls her eyes and turns away, flicking a hand at him dismissively. “Yeah, thanks for clearing up all those lingering questions. Not good enough for Heaven, not bad enough for Hell. The place, that is—not me.” She shoots him a grin that leaves him reeling. “Although maybe that’s true too.”

She’s wearing what looks like one of Dean’s own henleys and with her back turned he finally gets the courage to remark, “You weren’t buried in those clothes.” She turns back and narrows her eyes at him in an assessing way. “Or with that knife.” He lifts his chin and returns the look.

“Not all monsters have fur or scales. Some of them look remarkably like people,” she says and Dean’s struck by the idea of her here, helpless and lost, looking for someone who can help her and then finding out that the human-shaped monsters can be the most dangerous. “I took what I needed when I saw it. Shirt.” She pinches the hem of it. “Belt. Jeans.” Her hand rests on the hilt of her knife and she smiles again. “Knife.” It’s not the only one she’s carrying and she knows Dean knows it.

“So you’re hip to all this.” He loops a finger in the air and watches dimples appear by her smile.

“I got the crash course. Live and learn, that’s what they say, right?” She tips her head to the gloom of the trees, blond curls spilling  
over her shoulder and catching the watery light.

Dean follows because there’s nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, and she’s the closest thing to sanity he has right now.

She’s the closest thing to Sam he has right now.

:

She leads him to a cave at the top of a hill, the entrance wide enough that Dean hesitates before following her in. “This safe?” he asks and she grins, blinding.

“Whatever wants to bother us should know enough to think twice,” she answers and Dean’s struck with another image, Jess transformed from the nightgown-clad innocent of his memories into a resourceful hellion, fighting tooth and nail to land on her feet.

“After you,” he says, sweeping a hand at the cave’s entrance and Jess doesn’t make a quip about never turning her back, only ducks her head and leads him into the dark at the back of the cave. She starts a fire and the two of them gather around it for the warmth more than the light. Dean wonders what Sam would think if he saw him now, wonders what Sam will think when he gets them out—because no way is Dean leaving Jess here—and sees the two of them, both of them hunters in a way the Winchesters have never known.

“You learn to depend on instinct down here,” Jess says, as if she can read his mind, “not logic. Nothing else down here works on logic.”

“So why should we,” Dean finishes. “Makes you feel a bit crazy, though.”

Jess laughs and it’s not crazy, just warm and soft and sharp, like her, driving shadows from the mouth of the cave. “Sam’s getting you out, right? He’s okay.”

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Dean confirms. “Probably driving himself into the ground trying to figure out how to rip a hole in this place.”

“He does that.” Jess smiles fondly. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail but a few strands still corkscrew around her face. One piece ends just where a dimple would appear if she smiled. She seems strangely invulnerable, some impenetrable fortress of light in girl form.

Dean can’t decide if he wants to protect her or have her protect him. He thinks maybe Sam felt the same.

:

They roam together for about a week, sparring with each other more than they actually hunt anything. It’s by unspoken agreement that they find different places—clearings, streams, ravines, groves—and practice covering each other’s backs, staging different scenarios and walking through the motions to find out how the other person fights, to predict how they’ll move next.

A cluster of vampires corners them by a rock ledge one night and once they’re through beheading them, Jess picks up a stained trench coat and says, “Looks like someone else wasn’t so lucky.”

“Give me that.” Dean turns the coat over, inspecting its pockets, the loops where the belt used to be. He’s sure it’s Castiel’s.

“Friend of yours?” Jess asks and she’s not dispassionate, not hardened like Dean knows he would be after who knows how long down here.

“Yeah. A good one.”

Jess nods and wipes the blood from her knife. “Think he might still be alive?”

“Maybe. I hope so.”

Dean knows what he looks like, slumped over a muddy trench coat, not looking like a hunter or a predator. Just feeling…old. Jess puts a hand on his arm and he lifts his chin to find her on eyelevel with him. He feels a pang go through him at the thought of what she could have been, what she’s been made to be, feels a little spark of hope at what she might be if they ever get out.

“All right. Well, you know what I say to that?”

Dean shakes his head, waiting for Jess to answer. She slips her knife into her belt and grins.

“We’ve got work to do.”


End file.
